Les mille et une grâce des mille et un jours de l’Alhambra 1973

Salvador Dalí made this drawing with pencil, ink, and gouache, in no particular year. The painting seems to emerge from darkness, with strokes of creamy white and pale pink suggesting a figure. There are hints of yellow, like scattered stars, and touches of blue defining the form, especially in the leg. It's as if Dalí was feeling his way through the dark, searching for the figure within. I imagine him, pencil in hand, circling and probing, letting the image slowly surface. I wonder what he was thinking about as he worked. Was he thinking of Ingres? I see it as a dreamy echo of the old masters but rendered with a kind of surrealist looseness. It’s like Dalí is inviting us to participate in the act of creation itself, to see the figure not as fixed and solid, but as a fluid, ever-changing form, born from the touch of the artist’s hand. That ghostly white outline of the figure is really something.